Here's how you count the number of clues in a standard (rotational symmetry) puzzle: some of you seem to think that 72 is an accurate count of the CLUES in this puzzle. OPIUMS? Some things you just don't pluralize. Cool of HOUDINI to make an appearance ( 39D: Subject of the 2006 biography "Escape!").
PRIM AND PROPER CROSSWORD CLUE MOVIE
I very much enjoy both the book and the movie " TRUE GRIT" (both the John Wayne and the Jeff Bridges versions) ( 11D: Only movie for which John Wayne won an Oscar).
That is, I enjoyed discovering that I was dealing with not one not two but three words. I like the three-wordness of GOALLIN (22D: Not hold back).
Her name was definitely the hardest thing about the grid for me. Never heard of Carly PEARCE, which I don't feel too bad about, as she is very young and doesn't have much of a song catalogue yet. I guess you can tell I had the back end of that word in place first after a while, it felt like those first four letters could be *anything*. SOAKAGE, who knows? I wanted SINKAGE and then LEAKAGE (?). ASTARTE is 7-letter crosswordese that I routinely forget (until I get a few crosses) I get it confused with AMEN RA (which is 6-letter crosswordese, and an Egyptian god whose name can be spelled with roughly a million different vowel combos). The fill was adequate, although ASTARTEĀ ( 31A: Bronze Age fertility deity) and SOAKAGEĀ ( 41A: Liquid absorbed by surrounding soil) =. "Aha, Freddie Mercury! Oho, Bruno Mars!" But bottom line, the theme just feels broken. MUSICIAN actually elicited a vague "aha" feeling! You know, that feeling you're *supposed* to get when a themer or revealer really lands. It works for those answers because the answers steer *away* from planet names. This theme actually works precisely twice: with MUSICIAN and AUTOMAKE (I would've added WNBA TEAM, but. Also, planets are *all* (save Earth) named after gods, so the ROMAN GOD answer feels like cheating as well. planets? You think the rubes will notice or care?" Ugh. "Hey, let's just use these planets to clue. Nevermind that I've never heard of the term INNER PLANET and would never group them that way, that's not the point. you can't just clue the planets *as planets*. The only thing holding this clue-word set together is its solar systemness-that's the gimmick-so. But nothing clanks as hard as having The Actual Word 'Planet' In One Of The Themers. Anyway, because it's not a planet, and though I like the answer WNBA TEAM just fine, the single appearance of in the clues, when every single other clue word is a planet, really clanks. I know that you probably know this, but it's not. This puzzle is disqualified on two counts. (Update: this post is actually a pretty normal length-nevermind) Not a lot of time this morning, so this will be brief.